The Best Way to Clean Your Home CPAP Machine

When a home CPAP machine is used for a long time, it needs to be cleaned regularly to keep it clean and free from contamination. Properly cleaning a ventilator can effectively prevent the growth and spread of bacteria while ensuring you breathe cleaner air. Next, BreatheHelp looks at the best way to clean your CPAP machine.

What are the dangers of not cleaning a home respirator for a long time?

Ventilators, pipelines, and masks are suitable for bacterial growth, such as E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus. And Candida albicans due to the high temperature and humidity when they are in use. If not disinfected in time, many bacteria will enter the human respiratory tract with the airflow, posing a significant health threat to users. Especially for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it may also cause infection and induce acute exacerbation of the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, leading to hospitalization. And brings significant health risks and economic burdens to patients.

What are the benefits of frequent ventilator cleaning?

1. Reduce the risk of disease. They tend to harbor bacteria if you do not promptly clean your respirator mask and accessories. For example, I often use a nasal pillow. When you have a cold, viruses and bacteria, infect the nasal cushion. Good hygiene habits are essential during cold and flu season.
2. Clean air. The lungs have to inhale air well filtered by the respirator, and we don’t want to inhale contaminated air into the lungs.

Admitted a patient with lung infection from a southern province with chest CT performance and response to treatment, unusual! The patient was on noninvasive mechanical ventilation because of severe myasthenia gravis. Still, the container of the nebulized water had never been sterilized for almost 2 months. It was surprising to see so much cotton wool-like material floating around, and I realized the seriousness of the problem.

• Send the container to the microbiology laboratory, culture, and smear!
• In addition to floating materials, the bottom of the tank found a thick layer of suspected biofilm.
• Negative antacid stain, but Gram stain found a large number of microorganisms

Therefore, the respiratory helper recommends 2 ways to clean the respirator air:

1. regular cleaning and replacement of filters.
2. regular clear respirator mask, pipeline, and humidifier.

How often to clean the home respirator

Mask: daily cleaning
Piping: clean once a week; dry daily
Humidifier: clean once a week
Nasal mask and nasal pillow: clean daily

What cleaning supplies are needed for home ventilators

• Mild soap and water. Do not use harsh chemical soap to avoid chemical damage to the mask’s silicone. Mild soap for your respirator does not harm.
• Vinegar. When cleaning the respirator pipeline and humidifier, vinegar is a natural disinfectant that can kill bacteria. And the vinegar also effectively eliminates your humidifier bottom calcified deposits.
• Towel. For ventilator cleaning, you can use towels or CPAP mask wipes to help clean and remove ventilator equipment deposits.
• In addition, patients who can do so can hire a professional to cryo-sterilize the breathing line once a month to kill viral bacteria completely.

Conclusion

Bo warmly reminds here that home ventilators are generally intended for single-patient use. If a patient needs to be replaced, the line and mask must be sterilized to avoid cross-infection. Before you start cleaning, check the precautions in the user manual. Do not clean the ventilator equipment after plugging in power to prevent electric shock.